Homesickness

This morning I got to talk to and see my nephew through the magic of Google talk, MSN and webcams and I got a feeling of homesickness. I've been thinking of what I will do when I go back and right now, I've, well I've got no clue really what I'll be doing, but I think it will be good to be back. I'm not taking for granted the fact that I'm getting paid to live half way around the world, but I'm starting to miss family and friends (and hockey at night time instead of waking up at 9 in the morning to listen to a Leafs game).

I've hit the 1/3 mark and when you look at it, in two months I'll have hit the halfway mark, then in two more it'll be 2/3 then 3/4 then 5/6 then 1/12 and then I'll be on my way home! Time certainly flies around here. But I guess that means I'm having fun eh? :)

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Ok, I know that it's American Thanksgiving and all, but for the past 5 years of my life I've been living in the US, and so this was the time that I went home to my family to celebrate. I'm sad to say it, but over the past 5 years, American Thanksgiving has been more of a celebration than Canadian Thanksgiving.

Anyways, today I was listening to Micheal W. Smith's Christmas CD (his first) and was flooded with memories from both at home and at school. You see, this CD has been a Christmas fixture for my family and me for probably the past 10 years. As I was listening to it I got so caught up in it I openned my eyes and for a moment I thought it was snowing outside. But alas, that was not to be since the tempurature around here right now is hovering around 10 C or 50 F.

Also I got to thinking about my last trip home during American Thanksgiving. It was the first time I had driven in the snow with my new car and I had just come back from a real crappy day at work as Mike (Butyne), my roomate could attest to. Then I went on pretty much my second longest journey back home to Belleville and it was quite a trip through the snow, as my passanger Mike (this time Botting) could attest to. I think we counted about 24-28 cars that had skidded off the road.

So, right now I will do what has been done on countless other blogs and list the things that I'm thankful for:

1. That atleast someone has a plan for my life
2. My Family
3. My nephews Reuben & Evan, My Neice Nadine and My undecided relation, due in April
4. My Friends who now reside in Korea Malawi, Wisconson, Calgary, Hamilton, Grand Rapids, Belleville, and what ever other corners of the world they have been scattered to.
5. Hockey
6. Baseball
7. $7 Golf at the Christian Rec Center in GR
8. My time playing at Rivertown Sports. I see the Black Dragons are back in action. Hopefully Ryan and Jon are playing on it this year.
9. My IPod
10. My Laptop
11. My X-box
12. My computer
13. Bit Commet for allowing me to find games like NHL and Madden 06 here in Korea
14. That I'm half-way around the Freakin' World!!!!!
15. Guitars
16. Music
17. My car Ziggy. Take care of it Jenn
18. Football
19. Basketball
20. Badminton
21. The Friends that I've made in Korea
22. The good students I have
23. That I was able to make trips back and forth to Calvin safely
24. My Youth Group back home. Esp. John & Ingrid &Willie
25. Friends made at YFC and tours down in Florida.
26. A torrential downpour in Florida that lasted 45 min in the morning that allowed us to ride at Busch Gardens without any lines for the rest of the day.
27. Sarcasm
28. A good arguement/Debate
29. Staying up talking about serious things like: Manditory age-limits for pro sports, or about how certain teams will do, or rule changes in sports, or how much of a better job I could do if I was a GM.
30. Mentioning something on TV before the sports announcers mention it.
31. Being right.
32. The comedic stylings of Brian Reagen


That's about all that I can think of for the moment. Happy Thanksgiving all. Hope you stay safe through the holidays. (or through your normal lives for my Non-American friends.)

And now for some blatant commercialism

So yesterday was Rememberance Day in Canada, where we honour and respect the memories of the brave men and women who gave their lives in times of war.

In Korea, November 11th has a different meaning. Yesterday was Pepperro Day. For those of you who think that Valentine's Day is a day drummed up by chocolate manufacturers in order to make more money, in honesty those companies are amatures when compared to the Lotte company in Korea who makes Pepperro.

Pepperro, the best that I can describe it as, is a stale, pencil thin breadstick that has been dipped in low quality chocolate. Since Nov. 11 can be written as 11/11, it looks like a bunch of Pepperro together. And for this day everyone buys Pepperro and gives it to teachers, students, friends, co-workers, etc. Me, I just used the pepperro given to me by my students to give to my other students. And yes, they do celebrate Valentine's day here as well

Life of the Korean Kids

Just a quick update on what I've been doing these past days... I've been pretty busy teaching. One of our teachers went to Japan to get her Visa processed, meaning she would miss one day of school normally, but since Korea is cracking down on Immigration, there were a lot of people going to Japan for their Visas and her one day trip turned into two, so yesterday we all had to pull together and cover her shifts on our busy day of the week, so I got in to work at 11:00 in the morning, taught 3 kinders (a very exhausting endevor since they tend to treat me like a peice of playground equipment) and then left at 9:00 at night. It was a long shift.

A thing I have been thinking about is the difference between growing up in Canada and in Korea. Kids in Korea have normal school, then most have some form of English school, and then after that they might go to science academy, math academy, Chineese school, or something other of the sort and then go home and do their homework from each school. I was talking to a girl who was in grade 7 and I asked her what time she went to bed normally, she said it was around 12:30 every night and then she had to wake up at 7:00 to get ready for school. When I was in grade 7 my bedtime was most likely around 9:30 every night. Talk about a difference

Here are some pictures from a great website that does a spoof on comic book characters. Check it out if you have any interest in Marvel or DC. You'll deffinately get a laugh or two. Check it out here

The Li'l Defenders 

The X-Kids 

A classic 

I guess it's time

Well, it's still within the week or six timeline that I gave myself to update my blog (just barely) so I thought that I should give a little update on how my life has been going so far.
This month of October has been a little bit of strain for me with my MWF schedule having me teach from 1:00 to 7:30 without a break longer than 5 minutes, and then another class at 8:15. And to top it off, I have two classes, my 6:00 and 6:45 who don't listen to me, commmunicate with me or basically anything. They just talk in Korean pretty much the whole time, so the whole time I'm trying to talk English overtop of them and trying to get them involved. It's very tiring. Then, sometimes the class I teach with the director, he either doesn't feel like teaching, or he's sick so I have to fill in for him too, not giving me the break I would have at 7:30, so I end up teaching 10 classes straight. I think I'm becoming addicted to coffee. They have these wonderful cold coffee in a can things here that only cost 300w or $.30 US. So I think that's one reason why I haven't updated my blog recenty, it's just that I've been a little tired from this month. Hopefully I'll have a schedule change next month that will make it easier. (ofcourse another reason may be that I found a copy of Madden 06 to play on my computer :D)

Church life has been good here. I've met a few foriegn friends and Korean friends. I've been asked because of my computer skills (apparently they think I have some) to run the powerpoint for the praise & worship. The only big problem right now is that the file names are all in Korean, so I think I'm going to have to spend sometime renaming them so I can find what songs to put together. Also the Powerpoint and all of windows on the computer is in Korean too so I'll probably bring my laptop along as a cheat sheet until I become more familiar with the set up.

Also, another thing taking up my mind has been magnetism. My brother has a great question on his blog here that he's not been able to figure out. I've tried an explaination, but I think I may be missing out on a few things to get it right. If you have even a little interest in the field check out this question and see if you can throw in your two cents.

Well that's the update for right now. Hopefully I'll put up more soon.